That's an okay thing to be posting here, probably, just...
Please give us at least some idea of what you're linking to when you link to a thing.

I had to watch about two seconds of that before I had enough information to decide that I didn't give a half a shit and close out of the video.
If you'd given any actual information about what the link was I could have avoided that.

(EDIT: That still doesn't contain the information that made me stop watching, but better.)

Darqcyde wrote:

I don' think

You're probably right, I haven't watched the show. I was basing that off of very limited information._________________butts

Last edited by Heretical Rants on Thu Jun 20, 2013 5:02 pm; edited 3 times in total

Also, isn't it extremely tricky and difficult to portray a gender neutral dialogue in Japanese? I mean, isn't it nearly impossible for a speaker to not have to identify in some manner because of how the language works?

Sort of. There are indeed some significant differences between colloquial masculine and feminine speech styles. For instance, masculine speech tends to clip terminal vowel sounds, while feminine speech tends to emphasize them. Feminine speech is more modulated than masculine speech, especially among teenage girls. Intensifiers are split into masculine zo and yo, and feminine ne and wa. Even the choice of personal pronoun is fraught - ore or boku are masculine, atashi is feminine. It's possible to downplay these differences, especially when using the more formal constructions of higher politeness levels, but it makes you sound like you're giving a speech, or like a TV newsreader.

People will adopt the speech styles of the other gender for various purposes. Adult men will sound more feminine to speak to babies or young children, for instance. Women will use masculine forms to project authority. Doing so more generally will definitely give one a mannish or effeminate air, depending. In the media, you might see a girl portrayed as a tomboy using boyish speech patterns, or a gay man portrayed with more modulated speech. I don't have enough experience to know how often that occurs in the real world, and I'm sure there's a spectrum in presentation anyway.

Curiously, these gendered speech patterns are tougher to depict in manga, because the written language doesn't capture most of the differences. There's no depiction for pronunciation or modulation on the page. It's perfectly normal to use a gender-neutral personal pronoun like watashi. even being neutral when talking about others is easy in practice, as subjects and objects and corresponding pronouns are left out of sentences, to be inferred from context, far more than they would be in English. It's not weird to say something like ano hito "that person" or are "they" or "them," instead of kare "him" or "he," or kanojo "her" or "she." It might sound a little arch sometimes ("That person hates everything!"), but mostly it would be used for clarification. It would be more difficult to speak of significant others without being gender-specific, since the common words for boyfriend and girlfriend are actually the pronouns for male and female. There's a non-gender-specific word koibito for "lover" that, as in English, has slightly stronger connotations.

It's hard to say how you might speak colloquially if you truly wanted to avoid any gender-specific presentation. Quietly, I suppose._________________The reward for a good life is a good life.

Saying that you "don't really need labels" is often a privilege because you happen to be the default, and don't need to elaborate to counteract people's wrongful assumptions.

If you're genderqueer, then yay =P

If you're just cisgendered, it's essentially reinforcing your gender binary normative. Saying "I don't need to state that I'm female, it should be obvious" just kind of assumes that "looking stereotypically female is normal, and everyone else must conform to your default position".

Was that a "you" directed at me or just a general "you"? Yes I am genderqueer.
And urrrrgh the cis people who are all "isn't my gender obvious, just look at me!" can you please not. Unless they have a sticker with "My gender is ____". Then I guess that would be okay.

Katsuni wrote:

Also, a minor tweak here to your quote:

Quote:

Quote:

Straight men don't feel like they need a label because they're assumed the default in so many ways.

Straight people don't feel like they need a label because they're assumed the default in so many ways.

It works regardless of male or female (as you were saying anyway; I just kinda hijacked your quote since it fit well with such a tiny tweak, sorry =P ).

It's fine, it was mainly the context that made it men. Cishet men do probably feel *more* like the default though (not that they're usually aware of it). (Straight) male gaze is seen as "neutral gaze".

Katsuni wrote:

Quote:

Believe me, I spent enough time being furious at non-binaries for "giving up" since I believed if you weren't "the full transsexual" you just had to accept whatever gender you were assigned and to do otherwise was somehow unacceptable.

Sadly, a lot of trans people feel very similar... "trannier than thou" is a term used far too often because of necessity to identify those who seem to have it in their heads that only they are the "twue twans".

In the burgeoning stages of my realisation I submitted an anonymous submission to a queer site pouring out my feelings and one of the "trutransers" ripped me apart. I felt like an awful, shitty person and started questioning myself all over again. So I don't really have that much sympathy for them, even if I understand the motives.

Also, isn't it extremely tricky and difficult to portray a gender neutral dialogue in Japanese? I mean, isn't it nearly impossible for a speaker to not have to identify in some manner because of how the language works?

Sort of. There are indeed some significant differences between colloquial masculine and feminine speech styles. For instance, masculine speech tends to clip terminal vowel sounds, while feminine speech tends to emphasize them. Feminine speech is more modulated than masculine speech, especially among teenage girls. Intensifiers are split into masculine zo and yo, and feminine ne and wa. Even the choice of personal pronoun is fraught - ore or boku are masculine, atashi is feminine. It's possible to downplay these differences, especially when using the more formal constructions of higher politeness levels, but it makes you sound like you're giving a speech, or like a TV newsreader.

People will adopt the speech styles of the other gender for various purposes. Adult men will sound more feminine to speak to babies or young children, for instance. Women will use masculine forms to project authority. Doing so more generally will definitely give one a mannish or effeminate air, depending. In the media, you might see a girl portrayed as a tomboy using boyish speech patterns, or a gay man portrayed with more modulated speech. I don't have enough experience to know how often that occurs in the real world, and I'm sure there's a spectrum in presentation anyway.

Curiously, these gendered speech patterns are tougher to depict in manga, because the written language doesn't capture most of the differences. There's no depiction for pronunciation or modulation on the page. It's perfectly normal to use a gender-neutral personal pronoun like watashi. even being neutral when talking about others is easy in practice, as subjects and objects and corresponding pronouns are left out of sentences, to be inferred from context, far more than they would be in English. It's not weird to say something like ano hito "that person" or are "they" or "them," instead of kare "him" or "he," or kanojo "her" or "she." It might sound a little arch sometimes ("That person hates everything!"), but mostly it would be used for clarification. It would be more difficult to speak of significant others without being gender-specific, since the common words for boyfriend and girlfriend are actually the pronouns for male and female. There's a non-gender-specific word koibito for "lover" that, as in English, has slightly stronger connotations.

It's hard to say how you might speak colloquially if you truly wanted to avoid any gender-specific presentation. Quietly, I suppose.

This makes sense, since Ana speaks in "third person" a lot, but that's translated. Couldn't that mean she's speaking overly formerly, like royalty?_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Listening to two different clips of the Ana Gram character, I'd say in this one he sounds like a guy speaking in a falsetto tone with some feminine-sounding modulations and indefinite statements, but missing some particularly "girly" markers. I wouldn't call it androgynous so much as highly affected. In the other, he sounds like he's voiced by an actual girl. I would not call this speech androgynous either, though less affected, with the exception of a bit of breathiness and the many third-person self-reverences. That Yoshio character, on the other hand, speaks with a very exaggerated masculine style.

One thing about the subtitles: in English, Ana is regularly referred to as "he," but I never heard a strongly gender-specific pronoun used in the Japanese dialogue. It's always aitsu (not really gender-specific, but more often a male reference, "that guy" or sometimes "you," depending on the context) or ano ko (also not necessarily gender-specific but more likely to be "that girl" or "that kid," and also "you", depending on context), but mostly just as Ana.

For what it's worth._________________The reward for a good life is a good life.

Saying that you "don't really need labels" is often a privilege because you happen to be the default, and don't need to elaborate to counteract people's wrongful assumptions.

If you're genderqueer, then yay =P

If you're just cisgendered, it's essentially reinforcing your gender binary normative. Saying "I don't need to state that I'm female, it should be obvious" just kind of assumes that "looking stereotypically female is normal, and everyone else must conform to your default position".

Was that a "you" directed at me or just a general "you"? Yes I am genderqueer.
And urrrrgh the cis people who are all "isn't my gender obvious, just look at me!" can you please not. Unless they have a sticker with "My gender is ____". Then I guess that would be okay.

Oh that was a "generic general 'you' directed to whoever's reading or as a placeholder for 'anyone who fits this description' ".

My apologies, I have a habit of describing things that way as it helps the reader put themselves into the proper mindset for thinking about the problem easier (if you were in this position, how would it affect you personally? kinda dealie), but it can often lead to some confusion. I've been trying to break that habit, but it's easy to forget, my apologies for the confusion ^.^

Ennis wrote:

It's fine, it was mainly the context that made it men. Cishet men do probably feel *more* like the default though (not that they're usually aware of it). (Straight) male gaze is seen as "neutral gaze".

It was a really good quote is all, and fit both so well! You'd been talking about both sides previously anyway, so figured I'd just make that small change so it worked better in total, though I understand the context made it work in the original meaning =3

You aren't wrong though; default in general for our society is straight white male. In some ways it's a blessing and a curse, though, to be viewed as "normal". I'd go on at length about that, but it's a topic for a different time, I think ^.^

Ennis wrote:

In the burgeoning stages of my realisation I submitted an anonymous submission to a queer site pouring out my feelings and one of the "trutransers" ripped me apart. I felt like an awful, shitty person and started questioning myself all over again. So I don't really have that much sympathy for them, even if I understand the motives.

Understanding is the first step on the road to behavioural correction and forgiveness, but you're still stuck with the roadblock of that misbehaviour.

It can be hard to forgive someone who has wronged you, doubly so when they've wrapped that wronging in such intense malice and hatred.

Even so, it's only through understanding what makes them do what they do that we can try to educate them and correct their negative behaviour for the betterment of themselves and those around them.

Personally, I know I have problems (twue twans isn't one of them =P ), but I try to be aware of such and fix my problems as best I'm able (even if some are really difficult to fix!). I find it kind of sad that there are other people out there who don't have this privilege, and are practically slaves to their prejudices or hatred. They can't even begin to change, because they've built up a web of justifications and excuses for their behaviour.

As such, it's really hard to do... especially when you've been on the receiving end of a verbal lashing by a hateful person, to try to be understanding and forgiving. Unfortunately, if we don't try to be both of those things, we can quickly turn from victim ourselves, into aggressor in kind, much as they had been the victim-turned-aggressor.

I don't ask you to tolerate ill behaviour such as that, but I do ask that you at least try to use your understanding of why they can be so cruel to the advantage of all, and attempt to forgive them for their transgressions. You can't teach anyone anything if you're hostile towards them, and you can't help what's essentially become a wounded animal if you become enangered if they harm you in kind out of fear. You have to be kind, gentle, and soothing, with the knowledge they will try to lash out in fear and anger before you can help them break their cycle of hatred, where they are hurt, then hurt another, who becomes hurtful in kind.

Some state it's not our place to try to change other people's negative behaviour; personally, I feel it's our responsibility as members of society to help those in need, even if they themselves don't realize it, and even if they may try to harm us for even attempting to help. If we could have prevented them from attacking and harming another, and did nothing, what magical, mystical moral high ground have we supposedly achieved by doing so? Sometimes doing the right thing involves sacrifice, and sometimes that sacrifice is our own anger and pride.

Anyway, to get back on topic; "twue twans" people are a very large problem, yes... in the moment of vulnerability when a trans person exposes themselves to try to understand who they themselves are, these are the people who viciously attack and tear at that individual in the worst way. The people who should be the most understanding of their problems, are often those who berate and attack them the worst.

I have little doubt that this is a large part of the exorbitantly high suicide rates of trans people in general. If you can't even find refuge among others who have the same, if your one safe haven is actively hostile, that can be the breaking point for many. As such, I'm quite glad to hear that you, Ennis, were able to survive being placed into that position. =3

Anyway, to get back on topic; "twue twans" people are a very large problem, yes... in the moment of vulnerability when a trans person exposes themselves to try to understand who they themselves are, these are the people who viciously attack and tear at that individual in the worst way. The people who should be the most understanding of their problems, are often those who berate and attack them the worst.

I think, although I'm not an expert on this, that this type of fringe "true believer" is pretty typical of any movement. Whether it's the religious right, feminism, racial equality, etc. they all contain those who believe they are something or know something that less devoted believers aren't or cannot know, and are openly hostile to those who aren't also true believers.

Again, totally not supporting this with evidence, just drawing on observations._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

The person who attacked me (metaphorically) wasn't anyone I knew or will likely ever encounter again. I don't see the point of forgiving someone I don't even remember the username of.

I don't really understand the concept of forgiveness too well, it seems entirely too Christian. What actual effect does it have? I'm not going to absolve someone of what they've done if they're not even sorry. I will judge someone based on their past behaviour, if they want to change that behaviour for the better then I will incorporate that into my new image of them. Just because I understand the reasons for terrible behaviour and attitudes doesn't mean I have to forgive the person.

Also people not learning from hostility? Bullshit, that's how I learnt about racism. At first I was a little bit hurt, but after reading a LOT of the anger of PoC I started to understand. And I came from a place where my father had practically INSTILLED blatant racism in me, a la muslims being terrorists or sadly oppressed, aboriginals should be "grateful" for white people bestowing technology upon them, etc etc.

If people have (respectful) questions for me (not out yet so we'll see) then I'll be more than happy to answer them. If they decide to try to start a debate about the legitimacy of my existence, I am not going to be nice. I will probably point them to resources, but I am not going to actively engage with them. If they refuse to look at what I offer and demand I educate them personally, tell them why I should even be respected at all, then they can fuck off and I'm not going to "forgive" them unless they come back later and apologise and show they've realised how they were wrong. If you think you could handle a "debate" with someone coming from the position that you (Katsuni) are biologically male and always will be a man, science says so, vagina=woman, you're reinforcing gender, why can't you just be a feminine man, *slur*s are freaks then uh, good on you, because I don't know many people who could. But I can almost guarantee you're not going to change that person's mind, all that's going to happen is they're going to pick apart everything you say and insult you at every opportunity in the guise of "friendly discussion" and if you get upset, they'll use that against you too. You don't have to engage with these people, you're not going to "break their cycle of hatred" you're just going to get hurt.

Re: survival, eh, I'm not at all impressive. At all. Other than being trans* I probably have almost every other privilege. Plus I'm part of a support group on Facebook now, so that's helpful.

Forgiveness isn't just a christian thing, and it doesn't just benefit the person who did something wrong. It has the effect of letting you move on, and also offers the chance for someone to learn from past behavior and come back to the community.

I think for it to be effective, it has to come with an expectation the other person will working on fixing their future behavior._________________::crisis mode::